Inspecting your House Stumps

The foundations on any home are obviously very important but unfortunately like so many thing that are un seen or in hard to get to places, they often do not get noticed until the damage done, is very expensive. All floor supports suffer from the effects of age and eventually need some repairs and this page will hopefully give you a idea of the problems and what to look for. I have seen many people buy a home and even get a building and pest inspection only to find out later that the building inspector clearly did not know what to look for. Luckily now days you can just look up a page like this and find some very good information to at least know what the issues are when you are buying a home.

Foundation repairs can be very costly and the price is effected largely by how easy it is to get access to the damaged stumps. All foundations suffer from age at different rates and in different areas depending on the soil, humidity and how close to the sea you are. I have seen stumps under a house made from old round tree trunks and to look at them, they were very strong still but even just a simple test would reveal that they had in fact completely rotted off. I would hate for someone to buy a house like that and then be up for a repair bill that could cost them 10's of thousands of dollars. Worst still would be if they had not noticed the damage and the house actually fell off the stumps in a storm.

Firstly What are the symptoms of bad stumps?

Well if your foundation are not good and you have lived in the home a long time you may start to notice some small problems like doors that scratch the floor now when they never have before. If it is a home you just moved into it may be a lot harder to know if something is wrong with your foundations and my experience is that the only people you should trust for advice about this is Profesional Restumping companies. Yes Builders and Carpenters should know how to diagnose and solve foundation problems. However they normally lack the every day experience that leads to finding the problem quickly and giving the best advice about how to fix it properly. Lets face it do you want advice about your homes foundations from someone who knows how to build them when they are new or the guy who spends all day crawling around old stumps and knows exactly why they fail and how to stop it happening in the future. That is why I only recommend taking advice from companies who's primary business is repairing or replacing old stumps. Mind you the people who do this job day in and day out are normally a bit rough around the edges but they do know what they are talking about more than some bloke at the hardware store or some guy who only builds new houses.

Check Doors and windows

You would assume that when a builder built the home in the first place, the floors of the home were level and everything was square. If that was the case and the foundation had moved for some reason, then the door or windows might not be working properly. Actually doors and windows that do not open or close properly is a common thing that leads people to call a carpenter. Unfortunately most carpenters or builders are not crawling around under houses all day and so they are more likely to trim a bit off your door so it does not hit the floor rather than address the real problem of sinking foundations. Inevitably this will mean that in another few years you may be calling him back to fix the door again. If you are buying a old home the doors might work fine but there may be a mark on the floor where they just fixed the door last time it started to scrape the floor. This is normally a curve following the furtherest edge of the door in a arc.

Another sign of a dodgy repair, might be that they have needed to move the hinges on the door and so sometimes you can see the old screw holes on the door frame where they moved them to try and straighten the door. Now this may not be a indication that your stumps are not level because if you are buying the house, the stumps may have been already fixed but it can indicate that they have had problems in the past. Either way it would be best to get a professional in to check if you see any signs like this.

Bouncing floors are a good sign that your stumps need repair

Floors are not meant to bounce or move at all, if you feel like they are moving under your feet, IT IS NOT IN YOUR HEAD, get your foundations checked. Yes timber floors do feel different to walk on than cement floors but they still should not have any movement that you can detect just by walking on them. If you are buying the house, I recommend jumping up and down on the floor in different parts of the house. Just because the foundations are fine in the kitchen does not mean they are fine in the back bathroom. So check every room with this simple to perform test but remember that it still does not substitute for a professional inspection of your stumps.

Rattling windows or china plates

If while you are walking through the home you notice the windows rattling, it is another sign that the foundations are not supporting your home properly and they should be checked. If there has been movement in your foundations it puts more pressure on the stumps around that one that has failed and this extra pressure can cause all kinds of symptoms.

Door locks that are miss aligned

The same as windows and doors, your house was not built with locks that did not line up with the strike plate on the door frame. If they do not line up now it could mean that your house stumps are not level any more and so your will need to get your floors levelled

Creaking floor boards

Yes you might think it is handy to have that creaking floor board in the hall way that stops the kids raiding the fridge in the middle of the night but it is also a sign that something is not supported properly on the floor any more. It could be a sinking foundation or some timber that is rotting but rest assured it should be checked now before the problem turns into a much bigger problem.

Un level floors

It is sometimes had to spot a uneven floor but there is a very simple trick that you can use to tell witch stumps are sinking. If your place a kids marble on the floor and it rolls, that is a sure sign you need some urgent repairs to make your floors level again. If you roll the marble along the floor and it suddenly changes direction that is also a sign that the floor has a problem where the marble changed course. A marble will roll towards the lowest point and so if the stump has sunk considerably it may be possible to narrow down the area of damage before you crawl under the house for a detailed inspection. Just remember to check the floor in a number of places and this simple kids toy could save you thousands of dollars when buying your next home.

Cracks in walls

If you have a crack in the plaster, you probably call a plasterer to come and fix it and then a painter to re paint the repaired area but before you do all of that you should call the House Re stumping man to make sure your foundations are still good. Actually if your have cracks in your walls you know they are sinking and so you can expect the re stumper to find a problem. Only after your stumps are fixed can you fix the cosmetic part of the problem being the crack and the paint.

Floods that effect your foundations

If you have had the unfortunate problem of flood water coming though your home the last thing you might be thinking about is the stumps underneath your house. First you may just be trying to get the water and mud out but then you will need to check your stumps. Steel stumps are hollow and so in a flood they may fill up with water that will sit in them for a long time if it is not let out. Timber stumps may have moved and the wet ground may have let your stumps sink or they my still be sitting in water under the house. Water and timber stumps should not go together, so make sure under your house is dry as soon as you can.

All these symptoms are not necessarily caused by foundation problems but on average there is a good chance that they are. Either way if you have any of the above problems in your home, you should call a professional stump repair person to come and do a inspection as soon as possible.

What potential damage should you look for in my old stumps?

Different kinds of stumps have different problems but sinking foundations can happen to all of them. They just plain sink into the ground over time and this is more true in certain soil types and areas where there is lots of flooding. If you are inspecting a new home and you see some packing timber on top of your stumps (Timber would be preferred over Bricks or Besa blocks, rocks or other rubbish) it means your foundations have sunk in the past. If they have sunk in the past they will sink in the future and so make sure to put a Adjustable top on your stumps this time so that the builder can easily adjust the house back to level any time in the future.

Old timber stumps

If you have timber stumps under your home it is important that you have good air flow and that the area be kept dry. Water sitting under the house or leaking from bathrooms and kitchens can damage your foundations. Timber can also be attacked by subterranean ants or termites. Even if your timber stumps have a steel cap on them, that is not meant to stop termites. The caps are only designed to allow for easy inspection and stop the termites tracking up though the middle of the post all the way to the floor boards. So have a good look around your metal termite caps to make sure the little buggers did not just make tracks right over the top of it.

The next thing to look for with timber stumps is water, look for any signs that the timber is wet or has been wet. If timber is wet for a long time it will normally discolour and turn black. You can normally see this black dampness rising up from the soil. It will not cover the whole stump but where you have these signs you should get them inspected by a professional re stumper as soon as possible. Timber that is wet like this or has sign that it has been in the past, is more likely to have termites eat the middle out of them or to have the bottoms just rot off.

Poking a screw driver into the timber (something pointy and sharp), will give you a idea of how bad rot is if it has any signs of turning black. Just be careful, there is wet rot and dry rot, both are bad and a pointy stick may save you 1000's of dollars before you buy the house. Check a few places on each stump and you can even dig down a little on the side of a suspect stump and you may find that it is far worse looking just 100mm below the dirt.

Another simple trick with timber stumps is to just give them a tap with a rubber hammer and see if any of them make a different sound to the other ones. If termites have been chewing away at the inside of them, the may well have a hollow sound when you tap on them but I would check any stumps that make a different sound.

Old Cement Stumps

Cement seams like such a long lasting building material and cement stumps look so strong. In reality cement is heavy and brittle. Cement takes all its shear strength from the steel reinforcing inside the stump. Unfortunately when that steel gets rust in it, the rust swells the steel and will split the stump apart. When you are inspecting cement stumps they may have little bits of cement on the ground around them that shows that they are starting to come apart from the inside.

Cement stumps can last for many years in this condition but it is best to get them replaced as soon as you can. If one cement stump is starting to split, you can be sure that the steel in the other ones will not be far behind. So it is best to replace them all at the same time.

This type of cement stumps are heavy and often sink or even fall over and I don't recommend them.

Steel house Stumps

Steel stumps are really a great solution as far as strong trouble free house stumps go but you still have to make sure that the right protective coatings are used on installation. Also make sure they are inspected for termites from time to time, steel stumps are hollow and termites can travel up though the middle of them if you are not careful. Rust and corrosion from dissimilar metals being used can be a problem around fasteners but the biggest area that stumps will rust is on the inside of the cement footing. The other area to be aware of is if they have been welded to the tops that screw to the timber or the bases, the welds need to be treated with a good rust prevention paint like Cold Gal (zinc paint).

Generally speaking rust will grow from any exposed metal areas but unfortunately some builders just weld up a stump and do not treat any of the welded or cut steel areas that are going into the cement. These parts in the cement need protection more than the dry steel that is above ground. Often if the old stumps have sagged a little, a DIY person might jack the house up, cut a new piece to go in the middle and then just weld it in. The problem is that when you weld hollow steel pipe like what the stump is made of, the heat of the weld damages the protective zinc coating that the steel has on the inside. Even if the builder paints the outside, they normally can not repair the damage caused on the inside and that is one of the reasons that a screw on adjustable stump top is a better idea.

If the house has been though floods just make sure that the flood water has dried out from inside the hollow steel stumps. Again tapping on them with something and listening to the sound is a good way to check if they have water in them still. A higher pitched sound will happen if they are dry, than if they are full of water.

Often steel stumps are 90mm x 90mm but sometimes 75mm x 75 mm but they also come in different thicknesses of steel. Some Re stumpers or builders will use thin steel in order to win a quote at a cheaper price. Just be careful and make sure that you get what you pay for when it comes to your foundations. Engineers can tell you how think your stumps should be to meet the requirements in your area and it might be worth checking that because steel is expensive and just 1 cubic foot of steel weighs nearly 500 pounds (8 tons for one cubic meter). Yep a cheap quote might just mean that the builder puts less steel into your stumps than he said he would and the corners may be cut below ground, where you never see it.

There is basically 3 types or materials used to support the floor on a house and they are Timber posts, Steel posts or Cement posts. Of course if you are buying a old home you may find any kind of material under your home. My recommendation is to use steel stumps professionally installed by a re stumping company with our Rapid Fit house stump adjustors on the top to prevent future expensive repairs.